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Shipwrecks at Ocracoke

While walking the Ocracoke beach the other day, just north of the pony pens, I stopped to study a configu­ration of timbers and metal, partially buried in the sand. I had seen it before, and I knew that it was the remains of a ship that had wrecked nearby, but it never ceases to draw my attention. I have watched my share of movies about shipwrecks, and I’ve spent some pretty scary mo­ments on storm-tossed boats myself. I know what awe, ter­ror, and sometimes heroism they can inspire, and I always wonder what story these tim­bers would tell, if they could.

The waters off of Ocracoke Island are part of what called “the Graveyard of the At­lantic,” and her shore is no stranger to ships and boats that have run awry here. The Labrador and Gulf Stream currents converge nearby, causing frequent storms and unpredictable weather con­ditions. The shoals that lie just off the coastline change quickly and charts are of­ten unreliable. Ocracoke’s beaches are littered with the remains of victims of the sea, and the Coast Guard logs abound with accounts of them.

Forty shipwrecks s have been officially recorded at Ocracoke, according to Carl Goerch, author of the book “Ocracoke,” and this does not include ships of less than 50 tons. A list compiled by the Hyde County Historical So­ciety in 1976 for their book, “The Story of Ocracoke,” lists thirty-nine. The first of these was wrecked in 1819; the last three in 1942, the victims of German submarine attacks during World War II.. Most were wooden sailing vessels, but the last three were tank­ers.

The list does not include wreck of the Tiger, which took place in 1585, when Simon Fernando, chief pilot for Sir Richard Grenville’s English expedition to the New Word, ran aground in his flag­ship. Most of the gear was destroyed by the salt water, but the Tiger was eventually repaired and relaunched. It went on, along with the rest of the expedition, to Roanoke island and what later became known as the Lost Colony.

Also not on the list was a shipwreck described by David Shears in his book “Ocracoke: Its History and People.” Shears relates how, in 1750, a Spanish mercantile vessel, the Nuestra Senora, was wrecked on the island (recorded as “Occacock”) during a fierce storm. Its rich cargo–a million pieces-of-eight–was plundered by islanders who, according to Shears, were angered by pre­vious Spanish pirating.

Alton Ballance includes in his book “Ocracokers” a copy of a letter written by the captain of the sloop Henry, traveling from New York to Charleston, SC, in 1819. It says that the ship ran aground “on the south beach of Ocracoke Bar, four miles from land” in a strong gale. All hand but the captain were lost. This ship­wreck was included on the above mentioned list, as are those that follow.

Local legend has it that Oc­racoke’s wild ponies landed on these shores in a shipwreck, perhaps during the 17th or 18th century. There is also a story about a ship called the Black Squall, which was carrying a circus troupe and animals from Havana to New York in 1861, being caught in a storm near Ocracoke. The ship wrecked on the beach, and all aboard were lost, except for two beautiful Arabian horses, who escaped and made the island their home.

One of the most famous ships to run aground at Oc­racoke was the steamboat Home, which sailed out of New York City harbor in 1837. Known as the “Queen of the Seas,” this paddle-wheel steamer with sails was on its way to Charleston, SC, carry­ing 130-plus passengers said to be the “cream of the society” of both cities. It ran into hurri­cane force winds off of Hatteras Island and hit the beach about four miles north of Ocracoke Village at 10 P.M. It fell apart in the surf and, despite rescue attempts, 90 men, women, and children died. Later it was de­termined that only two life pre­servers had been on board. As a result of this wreck, Congress passed the “Steamboat Act of 1838, requiring that all ships be equipped with life preservers.

In 1899, on Christmas eve, the navigator on the British schooner-rigged steamship, Aristo, mistook the Ocracoke Lighthouse for the Hatteras Light. The ship, which had been carrying wheat, lumber, and cotton, ran aground near the north end of the island, and the captain ordered the men into lifeboats. The boats cap­sized and all but nine of the 31 men drowned. The people in Ocracoke Village took the survivors into their homes and shared Christmas dinner with them the next day.

The largest sailing vessel to wreck on Ocracoke’s shores was the George W. Wells, lost on September 3, 1913. The first six-masted sailing ship to cross the Atlantic, it was on its way from Boston to Fernan­dina, Florida, when it encoun­tered hurricane-force winds near Hatteras Island. The ship, which had 28 sails and weighed 2,970 tons, ran aground six miles south of Hatteras Inlet. The rescue team managed to save all of the 21 people aboard, as well a St. Bernard dog, pull­ing in the victims in life boats.

Most intriguing, perhaps, of the shipwrecks associated with Ocracoke was the Carroll A. Deering, better known as the ghost ship. On its way from Rio de Janeiro to Norfolk in December of 1920, the ship ran aground on one of the shoals near Hatteras Island. A rescue party from the Hatteras Inlet Lifesaving Station went out to offer help, but found no one there–-just a hungry, gray cat. “Everything aboard was ship­shape” relayed James Midgett, part of the rescue crew. “there were no signs of any disorder or any indications of a hasty departure by the men aboard. The table in the mess-room was set with plates, knives and forks.” A year or so later the bow of the Deering washed up on a beach at Ocracoke Island and was eventually buried, ac­cording to Goerch’s book, but in 1955 a hurricane unearthed it and sent it back up to Hat­teras Island.

National Park Service stud­ies conducted in 2005 have identified twenty archeologi­cally documented shipwreck sites on Ocracoke Island, ranging in size from a single timber,11feet and 11 inches long, to large fragments of hull, 20 feet by 50 feet. They appear and disappear as storms come and go, covering and uncover­ing the remains.

With modern equipment, stricter safety regulations, and improved methods of naviga­tion, the risk of losing ships and boats off the Outer Banks is greatly diminished. But the dangerous shoals and fierce storms that gave the Graveyard of the Atlantic its name con­tinue to make the waters sur­rounding Ocracoke a challeng­ing waterway to navigate.